Refined crystal structure of an octanucleotide duplex with I.T. mismatched base pairs.
Cruse WB., Aymani J., Kennard O., Brown T., Jack AG., Leonard GA.
The structure of the synthetic deoxyoctamer d(GGIGCTCC) has been determined by single crystal X-ray diffraction techniques to a resolution of 1.7A. The sequence crystallises in space group P6(1), with unit cell dimensions a = b = 45.07, c = 45.49A. The refinement converged with a crystallographic residual R = 0.14 and the location of 81 solvent molecules. The octamer forms an A-DNA duplex with 6 Watson-Crick (G.C) base pairs and 2 inosine-thymine (I.T) pairs. Refinement of the structure shows it to be essentially isomorphous with that reported for d(GGGGCTCC) with the mispairs adopting a "wobble" conformation. Conformational parameters and base stacking interactions are compared to those for the native duplex d(GGGGCCCC) and other similar sequences. A rationale for the apparent increased crystal packing efficiency and lattice stability of the I.T octamer is given.